Israeli strike kills 4 in an aid convoy; Israel says men were armed

An Israeli military strike hit the first vehicle in a convoy carrying medical supplies and fuel to an Emirati hospital in the Gaza Strip, killing four Palestinians from a local transportation company, officials said Friday.

The Israeli military said the four men were carrying weapons while the American Near East Refugee Aid group said the missile strike on Thursday came without any warning or prior communication with soldiers.

The Israeli military, responding to questions from The Associated Press, said it had been “monitoring the situation” and saw “armed individuals joined one of the cars of an Anera convoy and began to lead the convoy.”

“We stress, that the presence of armed individuals was not coordinated, and they were not part of the pre-coordinated convoy — as noted in Anera’s statement regarding the incident,” the Israeli military said. “After ruling out potential harm to the trucks, as well as a clear identification of weapons, a strike was carried out targeting the armed individuals.”

The United Arab Emirates, which reached a diplomatic recognition deal with Israel in 2020 and has been providing aid to Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began, did not comment on the attack.

Israeli forces have opened fire on other aid convoys in the Gaza Strip. The World Food Program announced Wednesday it is pausing all staff movement in Gaza until further notice over Israeli troops opening fire on one of its marked vehicles, hitting it with at least 10 rounds. The shooting came despite having received multiple clearances from Israeli authorities.

The war began on Oct. 7, when Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people in Israel and took 250 others hostage. The Israel retaliatory offensive in Gaza since then has killed over 40,000 Palestinians and raised fears of a regional war breaking out.

Meanwhile, Palestinian health authorities say that the death toll from Israel’s most intensive raid into the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war has reached at least 20.

The Israeli police on Friday said that their special forces had killed Wissam Khazem, a Hamas commander in Jenin, releasing video footage that purported to show the firefight that killed him. Hamas claimed Khazem as a senior commander in its Jenin branch, confirming his killing and vowing revenge.

The Israeli military and police also said that two Palestinian terrorists in Jenin who tried to flee were killed in an airstrike.

In Gaza, the Israeli military said Friday it had finished a major operation in the southern cities of Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah, adding that it killed 250 terrorists during the operation.

Over the course of the operation, the military said it also destroyed kilometers of underground tunnels and recovered the bodies of six hostages.

Elsewhere, Israel’s government body responsible for coordinating aid deliveries into Gaza said that authorities in the country’s southern port are unloading more than 3,500 pallets of humanitarian aid.

The Israeli agency COGAT said Friday that an American cargo ship, called Cape Trinity, departed Cyprus ferrying 3,577 wooden pallets of food, water and medical supplies from international relief organizations to the Israeli port of Ashdod, some 20 miles northeast of Gaza.

After the vessel docked in Ashdod on Thursday, COGAT said Israeli officials inspected and cleared the shipments for entry into the enclave.

Israel described this shipment as the latest in its multipronged efforts to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance to the enclave, with so far 10,700 pallets of aid delivered to Gaza by sea.